Wired Notes

Came across a few great quotes from the May issue of Wired.

Cult Life for the Atari 2600 (page 74)

Homestar Runner is getting console game treatment with an RPG-style game for the barbaric Atari 2600. Do you remember when we banged rocks together in order to make Pitfall Harry leap upon crocodile heads? Other people do, and Atari gaming has been making a kitschy comeback because of it. You can purchase joysticks whose bases are bundled with a small museum of these ancestral video games. There is also a blossoming homebrew scene using actual cartridges. And now this. A "commercial" release. Great quote from the Wired write-up on cameos by classic Atari characters, "If it's 8 pixels wide and a single color, it'll be in there."

Fear and Loathing of Information (page 193)

John Poindexter is what Wired refers to as "the Pentagon's Big Brother in chief", a guy trying to organize intelligence so that it can be better used to capture would-be-terrorists. In Wired's interview, Poindexter talks theory about what he is trying to do in broadening intelligence powers. To the statement "Your critics never relented on privacy questions," Poindexter responds...

"Advocacy groups want to stay in business, so it's in their interest to paint a dire picture."

A point I've been becoming increasingly aware of recently... If the problems are solved, the solvers are out of a job. I'll probably post a lot more on this in coming days/months.

The Facts Get Clearer the Further We Get From Them (page 135)

In an article on the MPAA's in-school anti-piracy lesson capsules, the reporter says, "The real point, of course, is to protect Hollywood from the fate of the record industry." What's telling about the quote is how the RIAA's claim (that MP3 swapping has devoured their business) has become a given, despite no clear evidence of its truth (just because the animal has four legs doesn't mean that it's had its business destroyed by peer-to-peer). Is piracy a problem? Sure. Is piracy crippling the RIAA? No. An idiotic business model is. The MPAA continues to strengthen itself despite a dramatic increase in movie piracy as faster connections and more efficient file-sharing progs are released... "Hollywood has seen revenue rise 27 percent in the same four-year period that the recording industry went into free fall." Look at what Hollywood has been offering customers... big, fat collector's editions of even the worst movies on high quality discs. They're reaping what they sow.